Worldwide Pants

Let’s talk pants here in the rasx() context.

Pants have always been a problem for me. You see, kids, I have the Walter Payton tailor problem. Being fond of cycling only made matters worse… My thighs and all that just got bigger… out of proportion to my waist according almost all Occidental clothing factories in the world.

Back in the day, my mother would find someone in the church who was a seamstress on the side. She would buy me pants with an oversized waistline (often too long as well) and have the seamstress take everything in. One of the many, many super-apocalyptic side effects of 1980s crack cocaine culture is that there are no more church seamstresses in the ’hood. I’m talking Los Angeles… I’m sure you have some nice lady over there in Kentucky.

The mainstream, LA-gentrified solution is to get “alterations” through a dry cleaning company—or go to some Jewish storefronts where my youngest son lives and have a straight up tailor tolerate my unforgivable Blackness. These pseudo-middle-class appointments are extremely time-consuming here in congested L.A. To be sincere, my income (and my lack of political gaming skills) really cannot afford professionally tailored clothing. My preference (apparently) is to buy pants that have one or more of the following attributes:

• Adjustable waist (Walter Payton)

• Crotch gusset (a preference picked up from childhood martial arts training)

• Waterproofing

• Office “appropriate” yet casual (I push limits here)

• Wrinkle resistantThe waterproofing point is very important because I refuse to buy another umbrella. I prefer a floppy rain hat and relatively sporty rainproof clothing. I recommend the Outdoor Research Seattle Sombrero Rain Hat and this list of possibilities:

• Mountain Hard Wear Nima Pant (noisy)

• Rivendell MUSA pants (pushing it beyond “office casual”)

• REI Elements Rain Pants (apparently discontinued); the REI Alpine Lakes Full-Zip Pants appear to be the replacement product.

• Ob (not pants) and, by the way, I got what appears to be an Orage Colab Shell on sale at R.E.I. a few years ago.So, for me, wearing pants during a rainy Los Angeles winter is downright fun because I’m dressed up like a stupid snowboarder. The real problem is being office “casual” and in a pair of pants at the same time during the summer months. Here are some not-so-fun summer pants points:

• I can get ‘lucky’ with some cuts with 36 waist 32 length. These unaltered pants look “okay”—especially when a top is covering the horrors of what is going on with my belt loops. (I have learned that many fashion-conscious ladies who do not get down with “urban” trends find my ‘lucky’ pants truly sad.)

• I do enjoy wearing martial arts pants for the drawstring fit—but these have no pockets (and probably scare a lot of Angelinos with my bad taste and disrespect for the dojo).

• I do wear “ethnic” pants—you know: pants deliberately designed for Africans (and Indians). But these styles go from past-Friday-casual straight into way, way too formal.

rasx()